Line #29 Film/TheWholeWideWorld


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6	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_whole_wide_world_1996.jpg]]
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8	A 1996 {{biopic}} about 1930s pulp novelist Creator/RobertEHoward, concentrating on his complicated relationship with schoolteacher Novalyne Price and based on her memoirs.
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10	Price (Creator/ReneeZellweger), who dreams about becoming a writer herself, works as a Sunday school teacher, but when she meets Howard (Creator/VincentDOnofrio), her ambitions awake. She admires him and asks him for advice, even though she is appalled by the way in which he handles sexual themes in his stories. He does not share her opinion that good fiction should be true to life in the first place but she interests him as a woman and a friend. When Price fails in her desperate attempts to put an end to an abnormal relationship between Howard and his sickly mother, they break off, and she leaves to Louisiana to continue her teaching career - three weeks before Howard's suicide. Price's book was intended as a response to the prevailing opinions on Howard's life and personality, and the film explores her point of view to analyze Howard's creation and the reasons of his tragic death.
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12	Besides being a psychological drama about love which somehow manages to be both mutual and unrequited, the film deals with such issues as: the process of achieving maturity, the nature of the connection between the mentor and his disciple, realist vs. visionary attitude towards fiction, the role of pulp (as opposed to mainstream) fiction in American culture in the [[GenteelInterbellumSetting 1930s]], and artistic activity as [[MadArtist a form of escapism]] triggered by the demands of society. The character of Franchise/ConanTheBarbarian is mentioned a couple of times - and it is suggested that Conan was Howard's simplified and coloured alter ego, which initially served as a channel for venting off his frustration but later became his gateway to insanity.
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14	----
15	!!Provides examples of:
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17	* AlliterativeTitle: ''The '''W'''hole '''W'''ide '''W'''orld''
18	* AudibleSharpness: When Howard imagines himself to be Conan, you can hear swords clanging as he describes his character to Novalyne. You can hear them again when in a fit of frustration he takes his actual sword out into a field and hacks away.
19	* BarbarianHero: Conan, obviously. In a way, Howard himself. By the time the narrative meets him, he's long since given up trying to fit in among the people of his small Texas town, because he could just never quite figure out how to fit in or (perhaps) why he should even bother.
20	* BewareTheNiceOnes: Novalyne at first seems timid compared to the bombastic Howard, but he soon learns that she's a spitfire to match him.
21	* DownerEnding: Robert E. Howard, "the greatest pulp fiction writer in [[TitleDrop the whole wide world]]," commits suicide.
22	* DrivenToSuicide: Howard, when he learns that [[spoiler:his mother's illness is incurable and she's unlikely to ever awaken from her coma. Indeed, she dies days later]].
23	* EverythingIsBigInTexas: Howard's personality largely meets the stereotype. Interestingly, the same features - loudness, cheerfulness and boastfulness - were attributed to Conan in Howard's fiction, which was explained as the result of his commitment to the culture of Asgard as opposed to cheerless Cimmeria.
24	* FirstNameBasis: To most everyone, he's "Robert Howard." To Novalyne, he's "Bob."
25	* ForegoneConclusion: Howard fans and historians will know that his relationship with Price won't end well and he will commit suicide.
26	* GenteelInterbellumSetting: Taking place between 1932 and 1936 in a small town in Texas.
27	* TheGhost: Creator/HPLovecraft is in the narrative, having asked Howard's editor for his address so the two writers might correspond. Howard geeks out about this. Lovecraft never physically appears, and only one line of one of his letters is read for the audience. Justified, as Howard lived in Texas and Lovecraft in Rhode Island, neither were the type to travel extensively, and in fact they never met in person.
28	* GoodbyeCruelWorld: After Howard's suicide, a short poem about death is found in his typewriter. TruthInTelevision -- it's the poem Howard actually wrote.
29	* HairTriggerTemper: Price quickly learns that the most innocuous things might set Howard off on an enraged rant. Novalyne, by contrast, has a tighter reign on her temper, but blows up bigger and stays mad longer than Bob.
30	* HistoricalHeroUpgrade: The real Robert E. Howard's racism was extremely downplayed in favor of emphasizing his eccentricities as more of a tortured artist and his feelings of being BornInTheWrongCentury and LongingForFictionland. Apologists put forth that [[ValuesDissonance racism was normal at the time]] and would not have been any sort of social difficulty for him. In Novalyne Price's memoirs on which the film is based, she does mention her negative reaction to Howard's racist attitude towards Blacks.[[note]]Howard's racism was mild compared to his idol, H.P. Lovecraft's nasty racism. Howard, to be fair, saw even other Caucasian strains such as Mediterraneans and Slavs as "a different blood". For his own reasons, he was specifically fixated on the Picts, in particular, as his ideal of a superior race, a sentiment that he would emphasize with one of his other creations, Bran Mak Morn.[[/note]] However, this particular conversation did not make it into the film. The scene where Novalyne goes off to College has Robert jokingly warning of those people down there (Louisiana) of a "different blood". Whom he was referring to is not specified.
31	%%* HollywoodKiss.
32	* IncurableCoughOfDeath: Howard's mother has this. The actress is portraying it as advanced pulmonary tuberculosis.[[note]]Although neither Howard nor his father ever mentioned TB when writing about her illness, [[https://reh.world/articles/hester-jane-ervin-howard-and-tuberculosis/ their description of her symptoms matches the experience of many TB patients]]. TB is a weird disease that can take many forms and can be mistaken for other illnesses.[[/note]]
33	%%* IRejectYourReality.
34	* TheKnightsWhoSaySquee: Bob flips out in the best way possible when he learns H.P. Lovecraft is a fan and wants to write to him. Later, he's quite proud of Lovecraft calling him "the modern master of fantasy."
35	* LonersAreFreaks: This is the point which Novalyne makes, when she tries to convince Howard that he should work on his social life and stop being so misanthropic. Howard rejects this, seeing little of worth in Cross Plains and believing ([[JerkassHasAPoint with much justification]]) that his writing career offers him an alternative to boring manual labor. Unsurprisingly, Novalyne is one of the few residents of Cross Plains who isn't (entirely) put off by him.
36	* LongingForFictionland: Throughout the narrative, Howard makes no attempt to hide the fact that he finds the real world insufferably dull, and lives more in the fantastic worlds of his stories.
37	* MagnificentMoustachesOfMexico: Howard seems to have a thing for Mexican sombreros, and at one point grows a large moustache to complete the look.
38	* ManChild: Howard, albeit a more charming example than standard for this trope. In one scene, all the same, a deeply frustrated Novalyne [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech calls him out]] for making almost no effort to live in the real world.
39	* MostWritersAreMale: Howard's fiction is presented as not targeted at female audiences.
40	* MrImagination: Howard, best exemplified when he first describes Conan to Novalyne, and almost seems to become possessed by the character. He later talks to Novalyne about ancestral memory, implying it's where he believes his Conan yarns come from (something Howard himself claimed, perhaps seriously, perhaps not).
41	* MyBelovedSmother: Howard and his mum. Aside from his slavish devotion to her, there's some implication that she deliberately tried to keep Novalyne away from him. Robert, as in real life, is shown as one of her only two caretakers. The scene where he tells Novalyne he cannot write is a portrayal of severe [[https://caregiver.com/articles/caregiver-stress-syndrome/ caregiver stress syndrome]], which can affect rational thinking and lead to suicide.
42	* PulpMagazine: The pulpest of all, ''Weird Tales'', appear a couple of times in the film.
43	* RelativeButton: Results from Howard's FreudianExcuse (without the murder part).
44	* ReptilesAreAbhorrent: Howard describes to Price gigantic rattlers imagined by him.
45	* SanitySlippage: His mother's worsening health and his own mistakes with Novalyne clearly have this effect on Howard's already questionable mental state.
46	* SexyMentor: Howard, in Price's eyes.
47	%%* SidelongGlanceBiopic
48	* SliceOfLife: This is what Novalyne wants to write. Howard considers this nonsense, as real life is what everyone has, but something fantastical is unique and different.
49	* SmallReferencePools: Howard's Conan stories are the only ones directly mentioned in the film, and those are mentioned extensively, since they're likely the only Howard stories a casual audience would have heard of. Howard does mention a "boxing yarn" going through his head at one point, and Howard wrote many such stories for other publications. In one of the scenes where he's reciting the narrative as he writes it, it sounds like a Solomon Kane adventure. He later talks about selling stories to three different magazines in the same month, but only the Conan story sold to ''Weird Tales'' is described (Conan fans will immediately recognize it as ''Literature/RedNails'').

Context Film / TheWholeWideWorld